The Persona

The Persona is the mask we all wear, a mask that pretends individuality. It makes us believe that one is a certain individual, but it nothing else than a well played role. The persona is a compromise one creates between himself and the community about how one appears to be. One adopts a name, a title, an occupation, and identifies oneself with this or that. One thinks that one is a businessman, a good father or a misfit, but all this are masks, ways we would like to be or appear to other people and does not always reflect who we really are.

The Persona is a complicated system for connecting the individual consciousness with  society. One could call it a mask that makes an impression on other people, but also hides the true nature of the person. It partly results from the demands of a society that one has to play the role that has been ascribed to him. In your profession you need to fulfill the demands of that profession as well as possible. A society demands this as a sort of security measure. From a shoemaker is expected that he repairs shoes to the best of his abilities, not that he is a poet. It is not even wanted that he is a poet, because then society thinks that he is not totally reliable as a shoemaker. In academic circles, a similar person would be regarded as a dilettante, in politics he would be considered as unreliable, in the religious area he would become a free-thinker. As soon as one deviates from his role, he becomes a suspicious person, despite the fact that he might still be an excellent worker in his profession. Therefore, if one wants to make it in society, one can only devote himself to one single thing. Of course, few people are able to do this, as we all have more than one interest. To accommodate to the wishes of society, we create a mask, a Persona. What is behind that mask we call ‘privacy’.

This split in our behavior is not without consequences. If we neglect the development of the Persona, then people might find us insulting or they make our lives difficult, because they expect us to behave in the way society demands. At the other side, there is danger of identifying too much with the role that one is trying to fulfill.